Desperate times for San Jose Sharks against Vancouver Canucks in Game 3 – NHL Playoffs Preview
Both, the Vancouver Canucks and San Jose Sharks, have vested interests in this year’s National Hockey League (NHL) Playoff Western Conference Finals. The Canucks and Sharks are just a few games away from either making it or breaking it and either is not
ready for the latter.
Vancouver so far have the advantage in the series as they lead 2-0 after winning two consecutive games at home and have the chance to put the Sharks on the verge of elimination in Game 3 on Thursday. They are fighting for their first Stanley Cup as are the
San Jose Sharks, but only one of the two can advance to the next round.
The Canucks have made it into the Stanley Cup Finals a few times since their franchise was made part of the NHL, but have not won it since. After having the best season in their clubs history, Vancouver is bound to end the postseason on a high note along
with bringing home the cup to Canada after an 18-year unforgiving drought. San Jose has not been able to advance into the final round, even though they have made it as one of the top teams in the West to the conference finals numerous times, this time being
the second consecutive. They might think of it as a curse and are giving it their all too finally break it this time around.
"(Discipline) is something that we obviously addressed at the beginning of the year," Canucks coach Alain Vigneault said. "We wanted to be more disciplined. We wanted to play whistle to whistle. We wanted to stay off the refs and the linesmen and just play.
I think we've done that. We've done that since day one this year. We've been very disciplined, very focused and we have to continue that."
The Sharks grabbed an early lead during both of the matches but Vancouver countered back both times and ultimately won the match in the end. In game one, the Canucks took advantage of a power play and scored the game winning goal by Henrik Sedin and in game
two, San Jose gave numerous penalties, thus, making it a whole lot easier for the top Western Conference seed.
San Jose must control the amount of penalties they give in every match and start taking advantage of the opposing teams’ mistakes. In game two, they gave over 40 minutes of added man advantage time to the Canucks which resulted in their easy defeat by a
monstrous 7-3 margin.
"The game was still 3 2 halfway through the third period basically, 12 minutes left, and I thought prior to that we already lost our composure," San Jose Coach Todd McLellan said. "It wasn't like we lost it when it was 5 2 or 6 2. We lost it at 3 2. That's
not the sign of a team that can win a series. That has to get better."
Come Friday, the Sharks will have the benefit of the home-ice advantage and should use it to their full advantage. Bouncing back in these two at home games will eventually make the series easier to counter back in the future. If Vancouver controls either
one of these two upcoming games in San Jose, the Sharks will be under intense pressure to save themselves from elimination and so far they have not shown good signs of coping under such situations.
When it seemed like anything could not have gotten worse, the Sedin twins, Henrik and Daniel are back in form after a long slumber in the past two series. The trio of the Sedins and Ryan Kesler is sure to give San Jose a tough time.
Game three is scheduled to start at 9:00 PM ET at the HP Pavilion Arena in San Jose, California, on Friday.
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